


Mizpah

by D_Reagan_Fly



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Book 2: Crooked Kingdom Spoilers, Complete, Dark Past, Graphic Description of Injury, Haphephobia, I blame Leigh Bardugo, I'm only working in the world she gave us, Kidnapping, Minor Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Torture, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Sad, She made the grishaverse dark, This is kinda messed up, Torture, Why Did I Write This?, captain inej ghafa has ptsd, jesper has feels, kaz brekker has ptsd, nina has ptsd, somewhat satisfying ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:27:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25100884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D_Reagan_Fly/pseuds/D_Reagan_Fly
Summary: Mizpah (noun). the deep emotional bond between people, especially separated by distance or death. Biblically used to describe a covenant or promise between two people before God. No matter what separates them they are held to that promise...It has been five years since the events of Crooked Kingdom took place and the Wraith has become one of the most notorious haunts of the sea hunting slavers and setting people free. She knew the had created an impressive caliber of enemies, she just didn't realize they might go after Kaz to get at her. She gravely underestimated her opponents and Kaz will suffer for that mistake.
Relationships: Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck, Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa
Kudos: 83





	1. Chapter 1

_They started sending me fingers._

Nina shuddered as Inej’s words in her last letter rattled through her head over and over again. The Wraith had written her frequently over the past five years as she purged the seas of slavers and their ships, and Nina had become accustomed to the Suli girl’s elegant scrawls describing vivid scenes of the sea, storms, the sky at night, her hopes, her Suli proverbs, and expectations of the future. The first paragraph usually gave Nina a brief description of the Wraith’s dealings with the slave rings she hunted, but she preferred to write of other things. She only kept Nina up-to-date as a courtesy to the heartrender who worried about her.

After so many years of letters and briefs and deep, soul-searching thoughts, Nina’s heart almost stopped when she received the short letter two weeks ago.

_Nina,_

_Kaz has been taken. The Fruwen syndicate I have been dismantling for the past seven months took him as leverage. I have been called to lay down arms and turn myself over. They say if I do so, they will release him. I very much doubt that is true. He has caused almost as much damage to the syndicate as I have this past year._  
_I would not ask you to come if I did not need you. Please, Nina, my friend, come help. And please hurry. They started sending me fingers._

_Inej_

There was no, “ _faithfully yours,”_ no “ _Saints bless you_ ,” not even a damn “ _Sincerely_.” Just a brief sketch of a signature. Nina had bought passage onto the first ship bound for Kerch that very morning.

Her journey had been plagued by sea storms and nightmares, the tumultuous weather drawing out memories of the _drüskell_ ship from all those years ago and the blue-eyed boy she only ever saw in her nightmares now. She had avoided travel by sea as much as she could since she buried Matthias on Fjerdan soil. Her work with refugee relief for both displaced Grisha and Fjerdan’s alike was thankfully mostly land-bound. It was for this reason she had not visited the Crows back in Kerch. She knew from the Wraith’s letters that Jesper had settled in permanently with Wylan and that Kaz continued to run the Dregs while Inej conducted her business at sea, but she had yet to visit them.

The fact that this is what it took for her to return was disturbing. She should have visited at least once. It had been five years.

Nina stalked down the once-familiar streets as she made her way through the Barrell, clenching and unclenching her fists. She couldn’t seem to move fast enough. It had taken her two weeks to sail from Ravka and every second was a second that Inej could have tried something stupid, or turned herself over, or they could have already killed Kaz. She didn’t know anything. As soon as she set sail it had been impossible for her to receive word from the Wraith.

She foolishly found herself hoping that when she reached the Slat both Kaz and Inej would be there. Kaz would be sending regular glares in Inej’s direction because she called aid all the way back from Ravka. He’d tell them coldy how perfectly easy it was for him to escape.

But he couldn’t exactly pick locks without fingers, now could he?

Fingers. They’d started sending Inej his _fingers_. Nina felt suspiciously sick. Inej was likely a wreck. A beautiful, noble, faithful, and probably blade-happy wreck.

From her years of letters, Nina also knew that Kaz and the Wraith had been staying in close contact. Inej wrote of returning to Kerch and the Slat as returning home. Kaz had purchased her beloved ship for her and most of her crew were Dregs or former Dregs themselves. He was always waiting for her when she docked and always saw her off when she set sail.

And yet their relationship still progressed at a snail-like pace. It had taken them three years to kiss for all Inej’s saint’s-sake! Nina’s eyes had rolled nearly all the way back in her skull when Inej wrote to tell her about it.

She could never understand the pair of them, in how insufferably slow they were. She had known she wanted Matthias the moment he pulled her from the ice instead of letting her fall. To be perfectly honest, she wanted him from the time she first laid eyes on his painting-worthy face, but she hadn’t let herself admit it until he’d saved her.

Everything happened so fast between the two of them. The only thing that slowed them down was Hellgate, and her own betrayal. But they’d overcome even that at a shocking pace.

It was even over suddenly. In the blink of an eye they hated each other, then they adored each other, and then he was dead.

She wondered how tall his tree was where she’d buried him.

Jesper and Wylan weren’t far behind and moved almost as quickly as Nina and Matthias. Jesper had taken his father home and visited the farm regularly, but he’d moved in with Wylan not four months after Van Eck had been arrested.

And still, Kaz and Inej were insufferably slow. It had been five years and the two of them were still playing their game of constant tension and uncertainty. Inej wrote often about her own feelings, her fears after the menagerie, the frustration of wanting Kaz and being afraid of having him, but she did her best to not disclose Kaz’s feelings or thoughts. Nina could read between the lines, however, and as baffling as the thought was, Kaz Brekker, Bastard of the Barrell, was being just as hesitant and cautious as she was. Though whether that was for Inej’s sake or his own, Nina couldn’t decipher.

Nina had been silently cheering them on from Ravka, confused by their hesitancy but aching for Inej to be happy. Kaz too, if she were being honest.

And all that waiting had amounted to what? Their story ending like her’s and Matthias’s had?

Possibly even worse.

As traitorous as the thought felt, she was grateful that Matthias had died quickly.

The Slat loomed up from the street before her, swallowing her in its shadow, and she knew she wouldn’t find both Kaz with Inej inside. But she couldn’t help but mutter a quick prayer to Djel. Matthias’s god had been her only friend now for so many years.

She stomped up the steps and threw the door open.

“Inej!”


	2. Already Too Late

Jesper was with Inej in Kaz’s attic room when the door cracked open and a woman called her name.

Inej, perched on the windowsill like a bird, blinked once, but did not respond. Ever since they’d received the last package, she’d carried an unnerving stillness about her. She had barely spoken two words all day and every movement she took was measured. She reminded him of a large cat, watching its prey. So still.

When the Wraith didn’t respond, Jesper crossed the room in two long strides and went to look down the stairwell. A broad frame with a wild mane of auburn curls was thundering up the stairs in Ravkan fighting leathers.

“Nina!” Jesper nearly burst into tears at the sight of her.

“Jesper!” Nina was taking the stairs two at a time and Jesper was leaping down flights to meet her. He crashed into her, fiercely wrapping arms around her shoulders.

“I’m here,” the Grisha woman promised. “I’m here.”

When Jesper pulled away he was wiping tears away and laughed bashfully.

“Sorry, I didn’t expect to get all weepy on you.”

“Psh,” the heartrender scoffed. “Don’t apologize.”

Her gaze softened. “I missed you. All of you. I’m sorry I didn’t come back until-”

Until it was too late. The words hung unspoken in the air between them but Jesper wasn’t going to be the one who vocalized them.

“I’m glad you're here,” he said, shaking his head and swiping at his eyes again. “Inej is upstairs. But Nina,” he sighed, trying to find the appropriate words of warning.

“She’s not… I mean she’s different. She’s…”

“I’m sure,” the Grisha nodded, green eyes flashing knowingly. “Is she upstairs?”

“Yeah,” Jesper nodded. He turned and led her up the stairs again, both of them taking two at a time.

“We received another package this morning,” Jesper said breathlessly as they climbed. “Inej paid their ransom to stall for time, but she hasn't turned herself over yet. We don’t know where they are yet, but we know several locations where they aren’t. She doesn’t want to turn herself over until she knows where they’re holding him and she can coordinate a break out. She doesn’t think that they’ll honor their word so we need to-”

“Jesper,” Nina huffed as they reached the top of the stairs. “Slow down. I need to know everything, but I need to be able to understand what you’re saying.”

“Sorry,” Jesper gulped down a breath.

“Your hands are shaking, love,” Nina said quietly, taking one of his hands between her own. Jesper wanted to cry again but he tried to swallow the tears back.

“It’s bad, Nina,” he whispered. “This is worse than even everything with Van Eck. This is... we’ve never faced anything like this.”

The Grisha’s eyes were haunted as she nodded once. She squeezed his hand and stepped through the doorframe and into Kaz’s room. Jesper watched Nina’s shoulders stiffen as her gaze landed on Inej, still perched in the windowsill.

“Inej,” Nina said, her voice soft.

Inej blinked. Once. Her dark eyes flicked over Nina’s frame, but her expression didn’t so much as twitch. It gave her title of Wraith a whole new meaning. She was like a phantom these days.

“Inej, I’m here,” Nina stepped toward the window and suddenly Inej slid off the sill, going for Kaz’s desk rather than her friend.

“Good.” Her tone was cold. Jesper shot Nina a sympathetic look. It wasn’t her.

“This is a list of possible locations that the Fruwen Syndicate has used in the past,” she offered Nina a stack of files, which the Grisha accepted with a general wariness.

“I also have a list of several known Merchants who have affiliations with the syndicate and a tally of their properties here,” she pointed to another stack on the desk.

“Alright,” Nina said, her tone sure but her eyes cautious.

“We received another package today and they gave me until tomorrow dusk to turn myself in.”

“And will you?”

“Yes. If we have no other option.”

Jesper had been trying to talk her out of it all morning. They both knew that the chances of the Fruwen’s holding a fair deal and releasing Kaz upon her surrender were ridiculous. Everyone knew Kaz Brekker. If they killed Inej and let him go, he would turn around and burn them to the ground.

“Do you know if he’s still alive?” Nina asked quietly.

Inej’s eyes burned with the scorching heat of a thousand suns.

“No. Not for sure. But he was at least within the last few days.”

“How do you know?” Nina asked, walking around the desk and sitting in Kaz’s chair.

“The package they sent this morning,” Jesper whispered, his voice suddenly forsaking him.

“Which was?” Nina’s voice was gentle but her words were so to the point they set Jesper’s teeth on edge. He didn’t want this to be happening. He didn’t want to talk about it. Kaz getting shot last year had been easier to handle than this.

“One of his eyes,” Inej said, her voice as calm and cold as ever.

Nina paled but nodded once. If Kaz had been dead, his eyes would have decayed. He’d been alive when they’d removed it. Jesper felt like being sick again, but there wasn’t anything left in his stomach.

“It means we know they’re still in Ketterdam,” Inej said, pulling one of her blades out and sharpening it with the whetting stone on Kaz’s desk. “It also means we know who the Fruwen’s hired to contain him.”

“Who?” Nina asked.

“Branka Vikander,” Jesper said, his mouth dry.

Nina went bone white. “The Mind-Breaker?”

Inej nodded, her eyes still hot and her face still blank. She was probably coming apart inside but Jesper didn’t understand how she could hold a blank face in a time such as this.

Branka Vikander was a legend, a monster who’d haunted nearly every known continent for the past thirty years. She had two trade marks. The first was that even when she let her victims walk free, which she did occasionally simply to spread the rumors and legends, they never came back to themselves. She was called the Mind-Breaker because she shattered minds beyond repair. Most of the people she “spared” died merely months after their release. Usually suicide.

Her second trademark was that she took one of her victim’s eyes as proof she’d broken them. She didn’t take an eye until she was satisfied she’d ruined them. Satisfied they would never recover.

If she sent Inej an eye, it only meant one thing: even if they got Kaz back alive, he would never be the same. Even if they saved him, they couldn’t really save him.

They were already too late.

Not for the first time that day, Jesper felt a hot pang of hatred for Inej. If she had never gone after these slavers in the first place this never would have happened. If she had sailed away and never returned, no one would have come after Kaz in the first place. He’d only be battling his own enemies. Not hers as well.

But as always, as soon as Jesper caught himself following that train of thought he cut it off. It wasn’t fair. Even if it was true.

Inej was fighting a noble cause. She was fighting a cause she needed to fight. And Kaz had backed her the whole way.

Jesper had always been prepared for one of Kaz’s enemies to use Inej as leverage against him. It was so obvious. It was dreaded, yes, but also expected. But never had Jesper dreamed that Kaz would be used as leverage against Inej. For some reason the possibility had never occurred to him.

And this was no gang boss, this was no disgruntled merch. This was the most dangerous slave syndicate of the century and they’d hired one of the most ruthless creatures ever born to take Kaz apart piece by piece until he couldn’t be put back together again.

“Alright,” Nina pulled Jesper from his thoughts. “Have you done much study of this eastern-most dock by the West Stave?”

Inej leaned over the Grisha’s shoulder and they began discussing possibilities.

 _Scheming face,_ Jesper thought. His heart was a sharp, broken thing inside his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment!


	3. Mind-Breaker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra warning in this one. You get a glimpse at what Kaz went through. I keep it pretty vague, but it's toture... so it's not pretty.

_Kaz had lost track of time in this place. It was well-lit, tall walls, a tower of shelves and a glass ceiling taunting him with freedom he could not reach. Everything here was a taunt. She was playing games with him, he’d known that even before he'd seen her for the first time. But this was not a game he could sit out._

_He_ was _the game._

_She needed the light, she said, for her studies. She didn’t want to miss anything._

_In the beginning, when he woke up strapped naked to a metal work bench, he was trying to figure her plans. Trying to talk himself through what would inevitably happen. It wasn’t the torture he was afraid of at first, it was that he was naked. So much flesh exposed. And as soon as his tormentor knew he was afraid of touch, they wouldn’t have to use a single scalpel, hammer or flame. He’d come to pieces before they even got that far._

_“I hope it’s alright that we undressed you,” were her first words. She had a weathered face, one yellow eye, one eye patch, a nose that had obviously been broken several times. Her hair was white with age and her back bent over slightly._

_Something like recognition and suspicion flicked through the back of his mind but he stamped it out. He didn’t know who she was yet. She had yet to introduce herself._

_“The human body,” she continued, although he hadn’t responded to the absurd introduction. Her voice was low, rough timbre suggesting she smoked often. “Is a_ _finely tuned instrument. I need to be able to see exactly what I'm working with. I’m sure you understand.”_

_He glared at her and set his jaw._

_She smiled, missing half her teeth._

_“Do you know who I am, Mr. Brekker?” she asked politely, folding weathered hands behind her back._

_“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he sneered._

_“You may call me Branka,” she said, ancient fingers combing her white curls back into a knot at the base of her neck. Kaz’s gut dropped somewhere beneath the table and he casually tested the restraints again._

_“I prefer to be on a first name basis with my instruments,” she said. “Do you mind if I call you Kaz?”_

_Kaz started rattling curses off in his head but none of them quite fit whatever it was he was feeling. Branka Vikander. Branka Vikander. Branka Vikander._

_The missing eye. The age. The yellow tone of her remaining iris._

_“Should I be flattered that the Fruwen’s hired you to deal with me?” He raised a brow at her, keeping his voice steady as his heart thundered in his chest._

When fear arrives, _Inej said in his head,_ something is about to happen. Pay attention.

_The Mind-Breaker’s face split into a wide smile, gaps gaping between her remaining teeth and gums black from smoke._

_“It’s so nice to find young people who have perspective,” she said, slowly stalking around the table, yellow eye examining every inch of him. The goosebumps that rose along his spine were involuntary. “I think you should consider it a great honor. You have no idea how much they’re paying me to make sure you disappear.”_

_“If they wanted me to disappear,” Kaz rasped. “They could have just thrown me into the harbor for free.”_

_The woman clicked her tongue and shook her head at him._

_“But that would be too easy, Kaz. And you are only a piece to a greater puzzle.”_

_Because they were actually after Inej. But she was harder to track. The whole city didn’t know where she lived._

_“What are they hoping?” Kaz sneered. “That the Wraith is some foolish school-girl who will cave? What are they asking for? Money? Her to turn herself over?”_

_“Both, I believe,” Branka hummed distractedly, her eye still tracing every detail of him. Studying him. Mapping out her course._

_“They are going to be sorely disappointed,” Kaz gave her a grim smile. “Before she kills them.”_

_The yellow eye tracing the scars down his left arm flicked up to meet his gaze. He refused to be cowed by this creature._

_“I think you are right, Kaz,” Branka smiled, closed-lipped at him, squinting her eyes affectionately like a grandmother. “But you see, these men underestimating the mettle of your Wraith does not lessen the importance of my job. She may kill them, they may kill her, but what is most important,” she held a crooked finger up. “Is that you have found your way to me. You are all that matters to me right now.”_

_He grit his teeth and refused to flinch as she brought a hand up to flick a lock of hair off his forehead._

_What was it that Inej did when she was afraid? Count her saints? He didn’t know all her saints, but he knew her knives._

Sankt Petyr. Sankta Alina. Sankta Marya. Sankta Anastasia. Sankt Vladimir.

_“I have many questions,” the Mind-Breaker said calmly, tapping her fingernail absent-mindedly against the lip of the metal workbench he was strapped to. The metal laughed beneath her fingers._

_“And you will answer them all when you are ready to.” She glanced down the length of his body again and he bit back the urge to fight against the restraints. He wanted to rip that remaining yellow eye from it’s socket. Instead he remained still. Never breaking his stare._

_“The first question I will ask you is this,” she rasped, her eye falling to his left hand nearest to her. He couldn’t help tugging against the restraints lightly. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth._

Sankt Petyr.

_“Why do you wear gloves, Mr. Brekker?” She slid her fingers over the back of his balled fist, her fingertips dry and calloused. Kaz swallowed the shudder that wrapped around his spine. He had made so much progress over these past few years with Inej. He could do this. He would not let them win. He would not. He_ _would escape. He would survive this. Inej would find him. She would not let them win._

Sankta Alina.

_“You have such beautiful hands,” the Mind-Breaker crooned. Weathered fingers found a pressure point at the hollow of his wrist and he bit back a gasp, his hand spazzing open. She immediately grabbed his open hand and splayed his fingers wide. Revulsion threatened to pull him under but he fought it back at bay._

Sankta Marya.

_“A lock-smith’s hands,” she noted. Pinning his hand to the workbench with one hand she withdrew a pair of steel garden pliers from her belt. Kaz yanked at the restraints, panic setting in despite himself._

Sankta Anastasia.

_“But you do not use your smallest finger to pick locks, do you?” she asked, the cool blades of the shears settling around his left pinky finger._

Sankt Vladimir.

_“I want to make sure we set off on the right foot, you see, Mr. Brekker,” she said applying only enough pressure to break the skin at first. “I want you to know that I respect you. I respect your occupation. A proper musician always respects her instruments. But an instrument simply doesn’t know what it’s capable of withstanding until it has been played. And I can already tell, you are capable of withstanding more than you know.”_

_He’d run out of saints. He only knew those five. So he started over again._

Sankt Petyr. Sankta Alina. Sankta Ma _\- the third saint’s name was drowned out by the snap of his finger and the echo of his barely muffled scream._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment!


	4. Forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tiny bit of painful fluff to add depth to our angst.

Inej glanced up from her work, hand straying to her knife and muscles coiling, when the door creaked open and Wylan entered. He was carrying a wooden crate full of steaming food, weary concern etched into his noble face. She let out a sigh and tried to force her muscles to uncoil.

Nina was watching her closely.

Jesper was up in a heartbeat and taking the crate from Wylan’s arms. They began mumurmering to each other quietly. Wylan, calm and steady, Jesper, erratic and jittery. They’d both grown over the past few years and filled out, trading the long, lanky limbs of youth for broad chests and rounded shoulders. Kaz had too.

Nina and Inej had remained much the same, but the Grisha’s face was older, wisened by sorrow and the ache of a great loss. Inej wondered if she’d aged over these past three weeks, if she wore sorrow in her eyes as well.

Wylan murmured something to Jesper, cradling his cheek with his hand. When Jesper nodded, Wylan turned to the women buried in paper schemes. They had narrowed it down to three locations.

“I brought dinner,” he said, his eyes fell to Nina and they brightened with unshed tears. “Hello Nina.”

“Hello, Wylan,” Nina smiled, getting up to wrap the young man in a fierce embrace.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” he murmured over her shoulder.

Inej turned back to her plotting, ignoring the other three as they began preparing plates and speaking in hushed tones. Perhaps she should have given Nina a hug when she came back. It had been five years after all.

But the only arms she wanted around her were Kaz’s. She couldn’t bear the embrace of anyone else. Not when it further drove the stake through her heart.

Branka Vikander had sent her one of his eyes. It was a promise. She would never have the same Kaz back. She’d lost pieces of him. Maybe all of him. She didn’t know.

Inej clenched her jaw and her eyes burned.

So much progress. They’d made so much progress over the past two years ago, after that first kiss on the docks under the stars. Of course it wasn’t the first kiss they’d tried. For three years they danced around each other, eyes burning with desire as they watched one another, but bodies refusing to let them do anything else.

The first time she’d kissed Kaz, he’d thrown up and spent the night shivering, pupils dilated and back braced against the wall, arms clenched around his chest. So it hadn’t counted.

The first time they’d tried sleeping in the same bed, just sleeping, he’d woken her from a nightmare and she’d pressed a knife to his throat on instinct. So that hadn’t counted either. It had been three years of failed attempts and tiny triumphs before that night on the docks. That night when they’d ached for each other, moving slowly, cautiously, gracefully.

It was the first time they started something that had been hard for them to stop. He hadn’t fallen into flashbacks of his brother’s corpse. She hadn’t associated him with the many men who had taken her in the menagerie. He was just Kaz and she was just Inej and their bodies finally accepted that. That’s why it counted as their first kiss.

They had each other for two years, they’d healed together. When she came home, he had become her home. Her safe harbor. He waited for her on the docks every time she returned to him and he walked her back every time she needed to depart again. He hadn’t gone soft, per say, but he’d slowly, painfully, faithfully removed his armor piece by piece for her. Only for her.

_“Kaz,” she whispered one night, watching the moonlight caress his face._

_“Mm,” he hummed without opening his eyes. She was curled up in his bed, facing him, tired but content, when a sudden spark of dread burned in her belly._

_They’d worked so hard for this. The amount of dedication and patience that they’d poured into one another was enough to bring tears to her eyes. And after all these years, nearly half a decade, they could finally have one another in every way that mattered._

_But what now? Would he wait for her to return at the end of every month? Would she wait for him? Should they go their separate ways now that they’d finally taught each other how to be with another?_

_“Inej?” She realized he’d opened his eyes and was frowning at her, exhaustion heavy on his face. When he saw tears glinting in her eyes he sat up, the sheets tumbling off his bare chest and moonlight painting his skin as he leaned over her. Saints, he was the most beautiful creature she’d ever seen._

_“Are you hurt?” he asked, his fingers slipping through her hair._

_She shook her head, not trusting her voice. Her throat was tight and she hadn’t realized a tear had slipped down her cheek until he thumbed it away. He touched her wet cheek and didn’t shudder, didn’t freeze. Two years ago he wouldn’t have been able to do that._

_She startled him by launching herself into his arms. His body was warm and firm against hers; comforting, not threatening. She sighed. He was her home._

_“What are we going to do?”she whispered against his neck. He started rubbing his hand up and down her back, his palm soft against her skin._

_“What do you mean?”_

_“We’ve worked so hard for this,” she sighed, closing her eyes._

_“We have,” he agreed, something uneasy slipping into his tone._

_“But, Kaz,” she continued. “Can we keep going like this? Seeing each other for a few days each month? You have your life here, and I have my life at sea… Can we really be content with that?”_

_When he didn’t respond for several moments she felt the dread in her gut burrow deeper._

_He stopped rubbing her back._

_“Are you…” he finally said. “Not content?”_

_She pulled back to look at him. A frown had drawn his dark brows together._

_“No,” she admitted. Something panicked flashed across his dark eyes and suddenly he was pulling away, untangling himself from her. She grabbed his arm and turned his face to her, stopping his retreat. “I want you all the time, Kaz. Not a few nights here or there, then weeks of dreaming of you, thinking of you, wishing you were with me. I go through withdrawals every time I leave you on that dock and it’s miserable.” She sighed. “It’s not that I don’t want you, it’s that I want you so badly it hurts. I just don’t know if I can do this forever.”_

_“Forever?” Kaz tilted his head to the side. They had never spoken of forever. She’d thought of it often but couldn’t bring herself to broach the topic with him. She was afraid he’d bolt. Or worse, see what she was saying and agree with her. Lovers couldn’t live like this for their whole lives._

_And that’s what they were, wasn’t it?_

_“You want… forever?” His voice was dangerously brittle and she felt like she was losing her balance a hundred feet off the ground._

_“Do you?” she asked, swaying on the tightrope between them._

_“Inej,” he said slowly, eyes locking onto hers. He swallowed once before saying the most beautiful words she’d ever heard. “If you’re asking me to choose between Ketterdam and you, I will choose you. Everytime.”_

_She felt like her heart was beating outside of her chest. She’d lost track of the tightrope between them and she was soaring through the air. Flying._

_“What?” she whispered._

_“Captain Inej Ghafa,” he murmured, dark eyes a simmering pool of promise. “If you want me for forever, I will follow you wherever you want to go.”_

_She was watching him with wide eyes._

_“But you love this city,” she whispered._

_“Not like I love you.”_

_She felt light headed. How long could she fly like this before gravity pulled her down again._

_“And the Dregs?”_

_“Why do you think I’ve been investing so much time into Anika?”_

_“You’ve been...” the words didn’t make sense coming out of her mouth, but she continued anyway. “You’ve been planning to leave? How long..?”_

_“Since that night on the dock,” his smile was crooked. She felt like her chest was bursting open. Two years._

_“You would come with me to sea?” She hadn’t even considered the possibility that he’d come with her. She’d never asked him._

_“Well, I can’t exactly ask you to give up your slave hunting,” he laughed quietly._

_She launched herself at him, kissing him and touching him and loving him more than she thought was humanly possible. He was grinning as he kissed her back, laughing as she pushed him down, climbing on top of him._

_“I take it you like this plan,” he said breathlessly._

_“Will you come with me tomorrow?” she asked between kisses. “Come with me tomorrow. Please.”_

_She could have him every single night. She could have him every single day. She’d make him her First Mate. He’d be at her back, dark eyes burning with that hellfire as they took down slave ship after slave ship after slave ship. Freeing people like her._

_“I can’t come tomorrow,” he chuckled, his hands resting on her hips. She pulled back and glared down at him. If he was going to come with her she didn’t want to wait a second longer than she had to._

_“Next month,” he promised, his eyes blazing in the moonlight. “Let me square everything away. I’ll go with you next month.”_

_“And you will stay,” she said quietly, kissing the corner of his mouth. “Forever.”_

_“Forever,” he breathed against her lips._

Within the month he’d been taken. A week later she received the first package, his left little finger, and forever was just a dream.

“Inej,” Nina pulled her from her thoughts with a steaming bowl of potato mash. “You need to eat. We need you at full strength.”

The Wraith did not want to eat. She wanted to fade away into nothing and forget her existence.

But Kaz was still out there somewhere, in the hands of the Mind-Breaker. And she’d let the Saints damn her soul if she didn’t do everything in her power to get him back. Whatever was left of him.

She accepted the meal silently.

“So you already tried these locations,” Nina asked, taking a seat across from her and gesturing to a deed for one of the properties she’d scouted. She didn’t dare risk anyone else searching for where they had hidden Kaz. If they knew she was searching, they might kill him.

Inej nodded and forced herself to take a bite of her food.

“And our best bet is either the dock on the West Stave or this island off the south shore?” Nina asked, shovelling a bite of her own food down.

Inej nodded once, biting her lip. They would have to pick one of the locations and hope it was the right one. They had less than a full day left.

“I think the island is most likely,” Jesper said, leaning against Kaz’s desk, Wylan settling in the chair nearby. “If I were to kidnap Kaz Brekker, I wouldn’t want to keep him on the mainland. An island would be harder to escape from.”

If Inej were to kidnap Kaz Brekker, she’d take him far, far away from Ketterdam and never return again.

“It used to be an old crematorium,” Nina frowned, sifting through building plans. “My powers might be useful there.”

“Have the Dregs spiders seen anyone coming and going from the island?” Inej asked Jesper.

“I’ll ask Anika,” he said, pushing off the desk and making for the door.

“Where would be the best place to keep a prisoner on the island,” Nina murmured to herself. “If this is the place…”

 _The heart is an arrow,_ her father whispered in her head. _It demands aim to land true._

 _I’m coming, Kaz._ The Wraith prayed to her saints that somehow he could hear her. _Hold on a little longer. I’m coming._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Kaz might seem softer in this chapter, but I figured the only way he and Inej stay together long term is if he is willing to take off his armor for her. So for her he is softer. Only her.
> 
> Please comment!


	5. Jordie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning again, we're back with Kaz and the Mind-Breaker. Be warned.

Sometimes he couldn’t remember his own name. Sometimes the pain was so great he didn’t have a name. Sometimes he was nothing but a bundle of nerves and ruined flesh. Sometimes she called him Jordie.

He didn’t remember telling her about Jordie. But she must have asked him. He told her everything she asked sometimes.  
“Are you awake, Jordie?”

He hated that voice. Hated the rough, smoke-worn tone. Hated the polite words. Hated the questions she asked. Hated the name she called him which was not his.

He kept his eyes closed. His eye. Not eyes.

“I think it’s time you had a decent shave and haircut,” the Mind-Breaker crooned, running weathered fingers through his hair. The table started to rattle as he began shaking.

“Oh, no,” the old woman crooned. “None of that now. I just want to make sure you’re in presentable shape before I let our sweet Inej see you. I wouldn’t want her to think I hadn’t taken proper care of you. No need to be frightened, Mr. Brekker.”

He cringed as he felt a comb run through his hair and heard the snipping of scissors. He hated that she spoke kindly. He hated her kindness more than anything.

“Did I tell you she made contact with Mr. Fruwen this morning? Just past dawn I think.”

His breath was sharp in his chest and his heart couldn’t catch it.

“There, there,” the Mind-Breaker placed a hand on his bare shoulder and he broke out into a cold sweat. “No need to panic, Jordie.”

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.

His name was not Jordie.

He couldn’t remember what it was.

But it wasn’t Jordie.

He couldn’t _breathe._

“Our sweet Inej paid the ransom yesterday. Twenty million kruge, if I remember correctly. But you know how I am with numbers.”

He clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from clacking together as she began shaving the sides of his head close to his scalp.

“She agreed to turn herself in tonight. Isn’t that precious? What would we do without our sweet Inej?”

A sob caught in his throat and he clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ground together.

“I wasn’t sure she’d still want you after I sent the eye.” Fingers traced around the gaping socket where his right eye used to be. “After all, what use is Kaz Brekker without his cunning mind?”

Tears burned in his remaining eye and stung in his empty socket. He could smell nothing but saltwater.

“But I underestimated our sweet Inej,” Branka hummed contentedly. “I think she wants to save even what is left of you. I’d wager she’s planning an escape for you as we speak. What do you think?”

_Sankt Petyr._

“Don’t worry,” she moved to his other side and began shaving his face. The cool razor blade pressed against his skin drew the tiniest whimper from his throat. “I won’t stop her if she comes for you. You are a bird that must be set free, Jordie. I never kill a bird that must go free.”

_Sankta Alina._

He’d bitten through his tongue again and gagged as crimson copper rushed down his throat. His name was not Jordie.

_Sankta Marya._

“Besides, I have taken everything I wanted from you. I have learned everything there is to learn about you. You have been a fascinating study, Mr. Brekker, but all good things must come to an end.”

She walked around to his other side and began shaving the right side of his face, unnaturally careful around the gaping eye-hole.

_Sankta Anastasia._

“If she manages to rescue you,” Branka crooned. “You be sure to tell her how much I enjoyed our time together. Will you? Our sweet Inej would be so proud to know how much pressure you can withstand. I know I’m proud of you.”

He wasn’t sure when he started sobbing. He wasn’t sure he’d ever stopped.

_Sankt Vladmir._

“Hush now, Jordie. Everything is going to be alright.”

His name was not Jordie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know some people write strong characters that never break under torture, but that's simply unrealistic. The Mind-Breaker is a psychopath who tortures people physically, but even worse mentally. Kaz is a strong character, don't get me wrong, he one of the strongest. But in order to make Branka a legitimate villian and keep this story as realistic as possible, even Kaz Brekker must be broken. Sorry. :(


	6. Hang On

Jesper kept rubbing his thumbs over the hilts of his guns nervously. He was waiting for the thrill to settle into his bones like it always did, for that heavenly high that didn’t take a single dose of jurda.

But it was strangely absent. In its place was a growing tumor of dread in his belly. What if they were wrong? What if Kaz wasn’t here at all? What if they were too late? What if Kaz was dead? What if they got him out alive, but he’d gone crazy? What would he look like, missing an eye?

Jesper shuddered. When the first package arrived, a left pinky, he had foolishly hoped it wasn’t Kaz’s. Even after all these years, he wasn’t positive about what his friend’s hands looked like. Maybe it was all a sick joke. Maybe they didn’t have Kaz at all.

But Inej had gone grey as a corpse and her hands started to shake.

_“It’s his,” she whispered._

Three fingers and an eye. Those were the four packages. There was so much empty space of wondering behind each package. Such silence. Had Kaz screamed when they broke his fingers off his hand? Had he begged as they gouged out his eye? What else had they done to him? What else did the silence hold? Jesper shuddered again.

“Hey,” Nina murmured, her hand falling on his shoulder firmly. “You alright?”

_I better be._

“Yeah, I’m good,” Jesper swallowed and stole a glance at Inej who was perched in the stern of the boat, still as a predatory cat. They were approaching the island by sea, the afternoon sun hot on their backs. They had until dusk to find Kaz.

“We’re going to get him,” Nina said firmly.

How could she of all people be so sure? After what happened to Matthias, how could any of them be sure? The Fjerdan had only been 18 when he bled out on the street. Youth would not spare any of them. Besides, Kaz was 23 now.

Silence fell over them again as they rowed. There was no way to approach with any stealth. They could only hope that nobody saw them coming. Nina said she thought she could take care of it if they were spotted, but that wasn’t certain.

“We’ll split up when we reach the shore,” Inej said quietly, shifting to face them. Her eyes were blazing with the same hellfire Jesper had thought was reserved solely for Kaz. It gave him a little seed of courage.

“While the others storm the North entrance and draw attention, we will search every room in our respective wings of the crematorium,” she reminded them. “I’ll go to the east, Nina to the West and Jesper to the South. Then we all make it back to the boat immediately. If none of us find him, we’ll search again if we can. Hopefully one of us will, though. Got it?”

“No dilly-dallying,” Jesper gave a grim smile. “Got it.”

Inej clenched her jaw but reached into one of her cloak pockets to pull out several pairs of gloves. She proceeded to hand them to Nina and Jesper.

“We’re wearing gloves?” Nina frowned. Jesper was equally baffled but already sliding the leather gloves on to see how his pistols felt in his hands with them on.

Inej glanced at the two other rowboats behind them, full of dregs and a few Grisha that Nina had produced. The Wraith lowered her voice and said,

“I don’t know what kind of shape Kaz will be in, but he can’t stand sink-to-skin contact. It makes him panic. We need to wear gloves so we can get him back to the boat without having to fight him.”

So many moments of Jesper’s decade long friendship clicked into place with cold clarity and something icy settled into his bones.

“Why? What happened to him?”

Inej shot him a glare and hissed. “It doesn’t matter why, just wear the gloves.”

Her eyes flashed dangerously as she swore,

“And if you mention this to another soul in your entire life I will gut you myself.”

She had never threatened him before. Over anything.

“No one is going to say anything, Inej,” Nina promised, her expression broken.

“Good,” Inej nodded once her eyes flicking back to the other two boats. She signaled and they peeled off, heading for the north shore of the island while Jesper and

Nina rowed them to the west.

As soon as they reached the shore they split up in their respective directions.

Jesper ran through the rooms of the crematorium, feeling sick to his stomach. People were definitely camping out here, bed rolls and a messy kitchen said as much.

Jesper had to duck into the shadow of a doorway every now and again as people ran past, following the sound that the dregs were making up at the north entrance.

Their plan was a simple, crude plan, but their best scemer was being held captive and Inej, although an unparalleled spy, was not a gang boss. She knew how to get herself in and out of places unseen, she didn’t usually bother with organizing others who couldn’t keep up. Thus she’d let Jesper make the plan. Thus it was simple and crude.

Hopefully it would at least be effective.

Jesper peered out from the door frame as soon as the footsteps seemed far enough away and slunk into the hallway again, guns ready in his gloved palms.

Why couldn’t Kaz stand skin-to-skin contact? The question haunted him as he crept down the halls.

The door halfway down the hallway was ajar, sunlight streaming across the floor and drawing Jesper like a moth to a flame.

His heart beat heavy in his ears as he pushed the door open quietly, every breath he took too loud. Sliding one eye around the doorframe he peered into the room like he had the others.

His heart stuttered in his chest as his eyes fell on the naked figure strapped to an iron workbench in the center of the room. Jesper froze.

He never froze.

But that was Kaz. Dark hair and pale skin painted with hellish black and purple bruises.

He can’t stand sink-to-skin contact, Inej’s words echoed through his skull. It makes him panic.

Saints and hels. They’d taken his clothes.

 _Stop gawking and move,_ he ordered himself. The voice in his head sounded suspiciously like Kaz’s.

“Kaz?” he whispered, stealing into the room, glancing around anxiously. What were the odds that they’d actually leave the Bastard of the Barrell unguarded? But he understood when he was up close. Burns and gashes and stitches and bruises so dark they must have broken bone. His cuffed wrists secured hands that were missing fingers and his blank face housed a gaping hole where his right eye should have been. His bad leg had been broken at least three more times; one break at mid-thigh, another shattering the knee, and another snapping his shin. They weren’t worried that he could escape and rightly so.

Jesper forced himself to keep moving, a gloved hand touching Kaz’s shoulder.

“Kaz?”

The other man didn’t so much as twitch. He was watching the sky through the window with his remaining, coffee-colored eye. He hadn’t even heard Jesper.

 _Nobody comes back from the Mind-Breaker._ Stories swirled through Jesper’s head as he fought back tears. _She leaves husks; bodies that breathe, but mindlessly._

“Kaz, please, it’s me. It’s Jes.”

When he still didn’t respond Jesper took a great breath in and slid his pistols back into their sheaths.

“I’m here to get you out of here,” he promised, pulling a lock pick from his pocket and setting to work at Kaz’s restraints. He was slower than Kaz, fumbling awkwardly, but he managed to pick first the left wrist cuff, then the left foot, right foot, and right wrist.

He hesitated when he reached the collar. It was the last thing tying Kaz to the table but it had a kind of lock Jesper had never seen before. Cautiously he tried to feel the tumblers with the pick. Kaz flinched when Jesper’s gloved fingers brushed against his throat and Jesper tried to soothe him.

“Hey, it’s alright. You know me. I’m here to get you out. We’re going to get you out of here.”

It sounded like he was soothing a spooked horse, not like he was talking to Kaz Brekker. But maybe this wasn’t really Kaz Brekker anymore.

 _Stop thinking like that,_ Kaz’s voice snapped in his head. _That’s not helping anything._

Grunting in frustration, Jesper gave up with the picks and reluctantly removed one of his gloves. Pressing his bare fingers to the lock, careful to avoid Kaz’s skin,

Jesper focused on the single thread of his power. He didn’t have an enormous amount of power, but he had enough to shatter a single damn lock surely.

As the lock broke in his fingers, Jesper barely had a half a second to break into a triumphant smile before Kaz lunged away from him and tumbled off the table. He was not as out of it as he’d appeared.

“Kaz!” Jesper started swearing, scrambling around to the other side of the table again just in time for Kaz to start crawling for the door. Jesper, dizzy with horror and revulsion, grabbed a blanket from the built in shelving on the wall and caught Kaz in two strides.

“Hey! Kaz! You can’t just-”

As he tried to wrap the blanket around his friend’s shoulders, Kaz snarled and twisted away from him. Jesper barely had time to duck away from the flying fist.

“Kaz! Stop! I’m trying to-”

Kaz threw another swing. This time Jesper slapped it out of the way and wrapped the blanket tightly around his shoulders, effectively pinning Kaz’s arms to his sides. He received a foot to the gut for his efforts.

Jesper grunted but refused to let go of his hold on Kaz.

“Stop it! Stop it! I am helping you, idiot!” Jesper yelped as Kaz’s head snapped forward and his sunk his teeth deep into his forearm. “Ah! No! Kaz, let go damnit! Kaz!”

Blood dribbled down his arm as he pried Kaz’s jaw open, cursing quietly.

“You listen here,” Jesper hissed in Kaz’s face, shaking him roughly. “I am helping you escape. You are not escaping on your own. You are hurt and naked and acting like a crazy man. So you are coming with me, do you understand?”

The fight was rapidly leaving Kaz but he snarled with bloodied teeth in response.

“Aren’t you just a lovely sight,” Jesper said dryly, repositioning the blanket around Kaz’s shoulders and quickly melting the two corners together with a burst of power between his fingers. That should help keep the blanket secured.

Jesper glanced back at the shelves with sudden loathing. They had purposefully put everything there in plain sight. Just out of Kaz’s reach. A blanket, a pair of clothes, a loaf of bread, a water jug, a bottle of wine.

Somebody needed to die for this.

But right now he needed to focus on getting Kaz out of here.

“Alright,” Jesper said, sliding his other glove back on. “I’m wearing gloves, see? Everything is going to be fine. I’m going to carry you now. Please don’t bite me again.”

Kaz’s face had gone blank again.

Sighing, Jesper eased Kaz’s battered frame over his shoulders, wincing as Kaz moaned.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It’s going to all be over soon. Just hold on.”

He grunted as he stood up. Kaz was not a light burden. Suddenly Jesper wondered how exactly Inej would have gotten him out if she had been the one to find him.

She would have found a way, he was sure, but the question was _how_?

“Ah,” a gravelly voice behind him made Jesper start. He spun around to find an old woman with white hair and an eye patch smiling at them. “What did I tell you, Mr. Brekker? They came for you after all.”

Kaz had turned his face away from her as soon as he’d seen her and let out a quiet whine of terror. He was trembling.

Jesper saw red.

He barely aimed as he pulled a pistol free and shot the old woman down, jumping over her and barreling down the hallway, Kaz braced across his shoulders like a sack of grain.

“Hang on,” he promised Kaz. “We’re getting out of here.”


	7. No Mourners

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EXTRA WARNING: this chapter is especially violent. Inej takes a really dark turn. I think for a character like her, she reacts differently to different forms of trauma. To this point in her life she's been the victim. But she's now reached a point where someone she loved (Kaz) is the victim and he was targeted simply because of his connection to her. When she's the victim, she processes and doesn't feel the need to retaliate or extract vengeance. When someone she loves is the victim, that's a different story.
> 
> .
> 
> I do not applaud Inej's actions in this chapter. (Although I do understand them, it does not make this level of violence right.). I am trying to write a real character here. That does not mean that I think everything she does is right.

Inej had not found Kaz. Her heart was in her throat as she finally forced herself to leave her wing and headed for the boats to see if either Nina or Jesper had. The North wing was a flurry of shouts and gunshots. She hoped Anika didn’t lose anyone. Maybe that was naive of her. 

They were running out of time. 

Inej skimmed over the rooftops, rather than running through the halls again, and cut her time in half. She landed silently next to Nina who was exiting the West wing of the crematorium. 

The Grisha spun around snarling, hands raised to call on her power. She dropped them as soon as she realized it was the Wraith.

“Djel,” Nina said, followed by a few curses in Fjerdan under her breath. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, I could have killed you.”

Inej only glared at the woman’s empty hands. 

“You didn’t find him either.”

“No,” Nina shook her head. “But we will. Let’s check in with Jesper. I have a good feeling about this place. I think he’s here. It’s too heavily guarded.”

Inej pursed her lips and couldn’t bring herself to respond. She darted in front of Nina and made her way out toward the dock. Jesper was crouched beside one of the boats, already waiting for them and Inej grit her teeth so hard she tasted blood. She’d been grinding her teeth for days now and they were nearly loose in their sockets.

But then Jesper was standing up, his eyes wild and alive and frantically waving them over. 

“I got him.” The words were too good to be true. They couldn’t be true. “Inej, I got him.” 

Inej was flying the last few yards, leaping past Jesper and scrambling into the boat. Nimbly she climbed around the figure laid out down the belly of the boat, her gloved hands hovering centimeters from his body without touching. He was wrapped in a green wool military blanket and remained unconscious as she whispered his name.

“Kaz?” Her gloved hands came up to hesitate at his face. The bloody socket was a shock even when she’d been expecting it. He had blood smeared across his lips. Heat searing behind her eyes she forced her hands to make the barest contact, cradling his face between her palms. 

“Is he alive?” Nina whispered to Jesper. Inej ignored them, stroking a leather-clad thumb over his ice-white cheekbone. 

He was alive. Alive but not here. She swallowed her tears and began to pull back the blanket to better inspect the damage. 

“Ah- Inej, wait, he’s-”

Inej felt something cold go through her at the sight of Kaz’s bare frame beneath the blanket. 

Years. It had taken them years to be comfortable with one another in nothing but their skins. Years of trust and effort and vulnerability. Taking the armor off piece by piece by piece. And someone had come and crushed every moment of that work. In three weeks.

Fury swelled through her chest like blue flames, searing her lungs and cracking through her bones. She slammed the furnace door shut, stoking the flames for later. 

She made herself take inventory of his injuries. The eye and the fingers were expected. Stitches across a split left shoulder. Cracked ribs, shattered possibly along his side. Burns boiled across his belly and licked paths along his chest. They’d been treated with an ointment, but they had burned deep for days before treatment. Six inches of stitches across his right side, wrapping around his waist. A series of gashes, all neatly stitched, down the inside of his left thigh. His right leg had been broken again and again and again. Broken toes. Both soles of his feet, burned. 

Calmly Inej folded the blanket around him again and took his four-fingered right hand in hers. Silently, the Wraith pressed a kiss to the back of a bruised hand. Gently, she settled his hand back down in the blanket and stood. 

Jesper and Nina were watching her warily. 

“Did you find Branka?” she asked Jesper, her voice sounding far away.

“Yeah, I think so,” Jesper was looking at her like he didn’t know her. Maybe he didn’t. 

“Is she dead?”

“No. I don’t know… I shot her, but my aim was off. I was just trying to get him out.”

Jesper’s aim was never off. 

“I want you both to take him back to Wylan’s estate,” she said, her voice cold and ironed out like a corpse. Wylan would be waiting for them with a doctor and his Grisha healer. Between Jesper and Nina, Kaz would be safe until she returned. She stepped out of the boat, her footsteps silent against the sand. 

“Inej,” Nina’s voice was very soft, something haunted aching through her words. “Are you sure you need to go back in there?”

“I’ll meet you at the estate in an hour or so,” Inej said calmly. “Get him out of here.”

Jesper was watching her with wide, frightened eyes and she pinned him with a stare like death.

“Do you have something to say, Fahey?”

Jesper opened his mouth once. Closed it. Swallowed. 

“No mourners,” he murmured.

“No funerals,” Inej’s face twisted into something too wicked to pass as a smile. 

“Burn ‘em to hell, Wraith,” Nina muttered.

Inej started toward the South wing that Jesper had come from, determined to do just that. 

... 

Anika had all of the synditate corralled into a corner in the main cremator’s furnace room when Inej came in, dragging a bloodied figure behind her in one hand. In the other fist, she clutched a bottle of wine from the shelves in the room they’d taken Kaz apart in. As the Dreg’s second in command, Anika had separated the slaves and indentures from the syndicate members as Inej had requested. 

The Dregs stopped and stared as Inej dragged Branka to the center of the room, every one of them flinching as the old crone started cackling behind her. Her hands and feet were bound tightly and she was bleeding from the right shoulder, her shirt soaked through from Jesper’s bullet.

It wouldn’t be what killed her. 

“What would you like us to do with the prisoners, Captain?” Anika asked, blue eyes hard as sea glass. 

Inej glanced over the lot of them, slavers, breakers, accountants, grunts, and leaders, her dark eyes smoldering. She would not send them to the Stadwatch. The lower down grunts would go to Helgate for an early death, while the higher ups walked free and continued to murder and enslave.

“They all die,” she said icily. 

“My father will have your head for this, you Suli-whore,” Fruwen Sr.’s oldest son spat at her. He was supposed to inherit his father’s position. His father was nowhere to be seen. Either he fled like a coward, or he hadn’t been here in the first place. No matter. She would find him. 

“I’m counting on his attempt,” Inej smiled and Anika’s appraising glance told her it was as sharp and unnatural as the one she’d given Jesper back at the shore. 

“Oh, my sweet Inej,” the old woman rasped from where the Wraith had dropped her. Her weathered face split into a sadist’s smile. “Our dear Kaz told me you were the _merciful_ one. So noble and pure and _good._ ” The Mind-Breaker spat blood on the floor and hacked out a chuckle. 

“How disappointed he would be to learn you are just like him underneath that righteous facade of a Saint-sworn path.”

“You are Branka Vikandor,” Inej verified, dark eyes searing into the yellow-eyed woman. 

“I am.”

“And you are the one who… did that to Kaz?” She couldn’t say what the hag had done. She couldn’t admit that she’d broken him. 

“I showed him what he truly is, my sweet Inej,” Branka grinned a gap-toothed smile. “We don’t know what we really are unless we are placed under the exact amount of pressure necessary, until we are stripped of all our masks and forced to look at our barest nature in the eye. It is a gift. Most people live their entire lives never truly knowing who they are or what they are capable of enduring.”

The Mind-Breaker licked her lips as if anticipating a rapturous meal. 

“Our dear Kaz did not disappoint,” she cooed. “Most men beg after the first seventy-two hours, Wraith. Our Kaz took a full week.”

Inej uncorked the bottle of wine and took a long drink. Sweet sugar and bitter rot swirled over her tongue and she took a moment to appreciate the flavor before slowly pouring the rest of the bottle over Branka’s head, dying white hair a dripping red.

Branka hissed, humiliation blotching her cheeks. 

The Wraith kneeled down in front of her, dark eyes flickering with death. She tilted her head to the side ever so slightly, still as a coiled snake. 

“I am going to kill you now,” she said calmly. “And it will be over too quickly, quicker than you deserve. I have more important things to do than waste my time with you.”

“What would our Kaz say if he could see you now, Wraith?” Branka sneered. 

“He is not ours,” Inej said, pulling a pack of matches from her vest. Branka’s single yellow eye widened in realization.

“He is mine.” The Wraith smiled and struck the match. 

“You don’t want to do this,” Branka snapped. 

“Oh, no,” Inej nodded. “I really do.”

She flicked the match at the Mind-Breaker and watched the wine catch fire. 

The Dregs, Fruwens, and scattered Grisha watched in fascination and horror as the Wraith burned the Mind-Breaker alive. Rough screeches skittered over the furnace room walls and the burning figure writhed at the Wraith’s feet as she stood, crossing her arms casually across her chest. 

The Fruwen heir was bone-white and watched in petrified silence.

“Carry on,” Inej nodded to Anika who eyed her with startled respect and a healthy dose of fear. The Dreg Second turned back to her crew and gave the order. Quick. To the point. Execution style. 

The Wraith was the only one who strayed from her own script. 

_What would our Kaz say if he could see you now, Wraith?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I repeat: I DO NOT THINK WHAT INEJ DID IS RIGHT. I don't think even she thinks what she did was right. But she did it.
> 
> Sorry, that's the darkest it will get, guys. Two more chapters to go!
> 
> Please comment!


	8. Djel Help Us All

Nina couldn’t believe how shaken Jesper was. She’d never seen him such a wreck. As they rowed back through the harbor and eased into the canal that would take them past the Van Eck mansion, the sharpshooter remained silent as the plague. As dusk fell over Ketterdam, amber light from the street lanterns reflected off two streaks of tears down the young man’s face.

“Jes?” she whispered.

Jesper shook his head and kept rowing next to her. Nina sighed and carried on the aching rhythm of rowing, herself: _Drag hard, retract from water, slip back to sea, drag hard_. She wasn’t in the habit after being in Ravka for so long, but she slipped back into it naturally, as though she’d been born to it.

She glanced down at the motionless figure lying in the belly of the boat. When was the last time she’d seen Kaz Brekker? Was it really five years ago as she climbed into the boat with Matthias’s body? Had he been somber? Had he been surprised? Had he even noticed? She couldn’t remember.

Kaz was so cunning and cold and untouchable. And yet she’d known what kind of man he would be the moment he approached her at the House of the White Rose to offer her a place with the Dregs. She had known the moment he stepped into the waiting room with the other workers.

He hadn’t inspected any of them with the looks they were accustomed to. The House of the White Rose was full of beautiful people, male and female. They had somebody to catch anyone’s eye. But he didn’t look at people to enjoy them, he looked at them like they were puzzles to be solved.

Kaz Brekker looked at people like he could see straight through them.

He wasn’t a noble gentleman who kept his eyes trained on your face for the sake of respect. He was a businessman, cold hearted and clean cut. Whomever he was having a conversation with was either a mark or a business partner. Nina had known the instant those dark eyes locked on hers that she was not just another Grisha, or another prostitute, or a former soldier with valuable skills. She may be all of those things, and none of them made Brekker bat an eye, but to him she was a business partner.

He had been the first person she confided in about her betrayal of Matthias. Nothing threw him. Nothing surprised him. He had already seen through her, seen what she was capable of, seen her intentions. It didn’t matter what he thought of her, because he saw her.

After the Ice Court, she considered him a friend.

She could not recognize her friend now. For some reason he looked younger than he had five years ago. Younger and ten times as ancient at the same time.

The gaping socket reminded her of Genya and something about it gave her courage. If Genya could make it, surely Brekker could as well.

Still, Genya had not been taken apart by the Mind-Breaker.

“It’s like we’re losing them both at the same time,” Jesper whispered, tears in his tone. He sniffed and wiped his nose on his shoulder as they kept rowing.

“Who?” Nina asked, even though she knew who he meant. She was too tired for this conversation.

“Kaz and Inej,” Jesper’s voice broke.

Because Kaz had been broken and it had shattered something in Inej as well. She’d looked at them like she was soulless back on the shoreline. There hadn’t been that resilient goodness that wove the Suli girl’s soul. Something else reflected from her midnight dark eyes: bottomless pain, endless hatred, hellfire.

“They’ll make it,” Nina said quietly. That’s what Jesper needed to hear. That’s what she needed to hear. They’ll both make it. They’ll return to what they were before. They’ve been broken before and they put themselves back together again. They put each other back together again.

Jesper didn’t respond and it was just as well. Nina wasn’t sure she believed her own words. Neither of them spoke until they reached the Van Eck estate.

After awkwardly shuffling Kaz between them, they barely made it halfway across the boardwalk before Wylan saw them and rushed out to meet them.

“Jesper!” Relief shone in Wylan’s worried blue gaze at the sight of the sharpshooter. “Are you alright? Is everyone alright?”

“Is the doctor here?” Jesper asked tonelessly. Wylan’s face paled as he beheld Kaz.

“Y-yes, he’s inside. He has a Grisha, too.”

“Good,” Jesper said curtly, starting forward but then hesitating a moment. “Thanks, Wy.”

“Let’s get him inside,” Wylan said without smiling.

_Djel, help us all,_ Nina prayed. _Or there may be more than two of us lost._

The doctor was waiting by the hearth when they wrestled Kaz through the door. Dr. Niel was one of the few doctors that the Dregs would see because he was tight-lipped and accepted bartered services for pay when patients couldn’t afford his rates. He once set Jesper’s arm and let the sharpshooter clean his hunting rifles for payment.

His white hair looked like it might have been blonde once and his grey-green eyes were the color of a storm at sea. He rarely smiled and when he did he never showed teeth. He was tall for an old man and slightly stooped over at the shoulders, giving him the look of a vulture.

His Grisha was a young Zemini boy he’d rescued from one of the pleasure houses along the Stave. The boy was nearly a man now and it took Nina a moment to recognize him. She wondered if he’d paid off his indenture and stayed with the old doctor out of loyalty, or if the price of his indenture was truly so great that he still had not been able to pay it off.

“Ghezen’s beard,” the Grisha gasped as they carried Kaz past. “How…?”

Dr. Niel’s thin lips pressed together fiercely and his storm colored eyes flashed. All he said, however, was,

“Do you have a room prepared, Mr. Van Eck?”

“Yes,” Wylan said quietly, striding for the staircase. “Follow me.”

After struggling to get him up the stairs, Nina was relieved to see that Wylan had prepared the guest bedroom nearest the stairwell. Even with the two of them, Kaz was not a lightweight.

Her relief was short lived however. As they stepped into the room, Brekker woke up. A quiet inhale and the coiling of his frame gave her half a second of warning before he dropped an elbow into her stomach. She doubled over gasping for stolen breath.

Jesper started swearing as Kaz twisted free. He made it one step on his burned feet and crumpled to the floor with a feral hiss. Nina ducked a flying fist. Jesper was not so lucky.

“Step back!” the Grisha demanded, dark hands flying forward. As his power lowered Kaz’s heart rate the boy knelt beside him, murmuring soothingly.

“Be calm. You are safe now.”

Kaz fought against the grisha’s power for a few seconds, but inevitably he began to relax and his breathing evened out. After a few moments, the grisha boy turned to the doctor and nodded.

“I think he is ready to be moved.”

Kaz was staring glassy-eyed at the ceiling as though in a trance. He was relaxed and limp as they moved him from the floor to the bed. His eyes flickered over them indifferently under the Healer’s spell.

“I need hot water and a basket of cloths,” Dr. Niel said quietly, rolling his sleeves up over weathered and scar flecked forearms.

Wylan nodded and left the room swiftly. The doctor stepped forward and placed two fingers over Kaz’s pulse-point at his throat. Brekker’s eyes dilated and he drew in a sudden breath. The Grisha broke into a sweat as he lowered the thief’s heart rate again.

“I won’t be able to calm him and heal his wounds,” the boy winced.

Niel frowned but nodded, if she had her former power… but she didn’t and there was no point in wishing.

Dr. Niel carefully began unwrapping the blanket pinned around Kaz’s shoulders. Nina covered her mouth with her hand to stop the sound that writhed in her lungs at the sight of him.

_No. No. No._

_It’s like we’re losing them both at the same time._

Jesper was still standing in the middle of the room, hands clenched uselessly at his sides, tears glinting in grey eyes.

_No._

“Will one of you,” Niel turned from examining his patient to Nina and Jesper. “Hold the anesthetic over his nose and mouth while I work?”

“I can,” Nina said, pulling her hand away from her mouth. The Doctor nodded and began rummaging through his bag.

“Mr. Fahey, is that correct?” the old man squinted at Jesper.

Jesper nodded, uncharacteristically speechless.

“Would you please find something for the patient to wear when I have finished my work? A single garment, easy to open if possible. A robe of some sort, perhaps?”

Jesper nodded again and stumbled from the room as though he couldn’t bear it another second.

“Daven,” the doctor spoke to the Healer as he prepared the anesthetic. “There is too much damage that must be repaired. You will need to pace your healing carefully.”

“Alright,” the Grisha frowned, clearly unaccustomed to this order. But Nina had seen battlefields and knew what the old doctor was saying before he finished.

“Tonight you will heal bones and flesh,” Dr. Niel told the boy as he handed Nina a cloth and the bottle of anesthetic solution. “Not scars.”

Dark eyes widened.

“But-”

“Our choices are to heal all of these wounds or only a few, Daven,” the doctor said as Wylan entered carrying a steaming basin of water and a stack of clean rags.

Niel accepted them and set up his workspace on a dresser at the foot of the bed.

Daven stepped away from his position at Kaz’s head and Nina slid into the vacant spot. In one fluid moment the Grisha released Brekker from his trance and Nina pressed the cloth over his nose and mouth.

His eyes went wide and he struggled against her for a few heartbeats. Then his eyes rolled back into his skull and he faded into the nothingness of a dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost to the end! Please comment!


	9. Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mizpah (noun). the deep emotional bond between people, especially separated by distance or death. Biblically used to describe a covenant or promise between two people before God. No matter what separates them they are held to that promise.

The moon was already tumbling from the night sky by the time Inej made it back to the Van Eck estate. The house loomed up before her, a sanctuary of the present haunted with memories of the past. Lights and shadows flickered throughout the mansion despite the early hour, converging on the second floor. Inej easily scaled the wall and slipped soundlessly through the window of the eastern-most guest room.

Kaz was laid out on the bed, a healer's hands flitting over his naked limbs and a loose sheet draped over his hips. Nina was sitting at the head of the bed holding a cloth over Kaz's face and the white-haired doctor crouched next to her, finishing bandaging the empty socket.

Nina saw her first and started, alerting the healers to the Wraith's presence.

"Djel, Inej," Nina muttered. "That's the second time today you've scared me out of my own skin."

"How is he?" Inej asked quietly.

"He will live," the doctor said, wincing as he creaked to his feet. "But only time will tell how he heals."

_"Most men beg after the first seventy-two hours, Wraith. Our Kaz took a full week."_

Kaz Brekker did not beg.

"I will have to report this to the Stadwatch," Niel said, storm-colored eyes clouded as he turned to begin packing up his bag.

"The Stadwatch doesn't need to be involved," Inej said. "You will be well compensated for your silence."

"In the forty years I've doctored in this city," Niel said, stormy eyes flashing. "I have never seen the likes of this. It is not a question of money. I must notify the proper authorities. If something like this happens again, it will not be because of my silence."

"This was a targeted act," Inej said, slipping into the room. "And it will not happen again."

"How can you be certain?" the doctor snapped, old frame quivering.

"Because Branka Vikandr was responsible," Inej said. "And I killed her."

The doctor sighed and cast a tired look over his patient. "I had wondered if this was her work."

"It will not happen again," Inej repeated.

"You really killed her?" The doctor appraised the young Suli woman before him. "Are you sure it was her?"

"Yes," Inej answered both questions at once.

"What did he do to draw the attention of that wicked creature?"

 _He fell in love with the Wraith,_ the words rotted away at her soul. Nina watched her with wary green eyes.

"Thank you for your services, Doctor," Inej said. "I will have the proper payment added to your account by tomorrow evening."

"Very well," the doctor said, mouth pulling down at the corners. "Call me up if he needs anything. I will come by in three days time to check in."

"I'll show you out," Wylan suddenly appeared in the doorway, Jesper standing up behind him. They must have been sitting in the hallway waiting.

"Thank you, Mr. Van Eck," the doctor said and turned to his Grisha apprentice. "Are you ready, Daven?"

The boy looked exhausted to the point of tears but he nodded and gathered up his coat to follow the doctor down the stairs.

"I have this," Jesper said, offering her a bathrobe. His eyes bloodshot from crying and he had a bandage wrapped around one of his forearms. Inej was glad Wylan had been with him.

"Will you help me?" she asked her friends and together they wrapped the robe around Kaz and layered quilts over him.

"I'm beat," Nina said, rubbing her hands over her face and pushing auburn curls from her forehead. "Jesper, where can I get some decent food around here?"

"How can you possibly be hungry right now?" Jesper huffed, but a tired smile quirked at the corners of his mouth.

"I'm hungry all the time, love," Nina smiled, although it didn't warm her eyes.

"Do you need anything Inej?" Jesper asked the Wraith who had perched at the foot of Kaz's bed like a bird.

"No," the Wraith replied, dark eyes trained on Kaz's bandaged face.

"We'll be close by if you do," Nina said, pulling Jesper by the arm out the door and closing it behind them.

Inej stayed in that position, watching over him until the first briny light began to filter through the window. She got up to close the blinds, cold seeping into her joints and eyes aching.

This early in the morning, everything was in shades of grey. The barest glimmers of light only revealed how dark the world still was.

_"How disappointed he would be to learn you are just like him underneath that righteous facade of a Saint-sworn path."_

When she turned away from the window, one coffee-colored eye was trained on her. Her heart tightened.

When was the first time she thought she could love him? When he gave her Sankt Petyr, the blade glittering as she pulled it from it's sheath?

_"Everybody needs a good blade or two, don't think you're any exception."_

_Inej examined the leather hilt and the Suli script engraved in it. What would her mother think of her carrying a blade? She swallowed and pulled it from the sheath. It was a well balanced blade, small, slender, elegant. It was a blade made for her hand._

_"Thank you," Inej glanced up at the dark eyed boy who perplexed her to no end. He was watching her with something flickering behind his gaze that she couldn't identify. "I don't know how I will repay you…"_

_She could think of several ways, but each over them knotted her insides._

_He didn't respond with the answer she'd expected, the answer any other man or boy might have given._

_"You can thank me by learning how to use it."_

_She wondered if she could love a boy like this. Dark, strong, bitter, cruel. The kind of boy who gave her the means to protect herself; who never asked for her to give him her body in payment. He'd saved her and all he asked for in return was that she learn to save herself._

_Yes, she realized warily, she could love a boy like this._

Now as she looked into his remaining eye she wondered if she could still love him, if her love brought such destruction in its wake. He made plenty of enemies for himself it was true, but if she had never loved him, perhaps he never would have been given over to the Mind-Breaker.

"Inej?" His voice was rough, damaged.

She knelt down next to the bed, resting her chin on the mattress.

"I'm here."

"You came?" He looked lost, open, broken. He did not look like the boy who had given her the knife, the boy she'd learned to love.

He looked like the boy who threw up after kissing her for the first time and spent the night huddled in the corner.

She loved that boy too.

"Of course I came," she whispered, stroking hair off his forehead with a gloved hand. His words from years ago filtered through her memory like the first light of dawn illuminating the darkness.

"I will always come for you," she promised. "And if I can't walk, I'll crawl to you, and no matter how broken we are, we'll fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing."

"Inej?" he whispered again, eye slipping closed as he fell back into sleep.

Tears blurred her world for a moment before she swallowed them like embers down her throat.

"Because," she whispered. "That's what we do."

_"What would our Kaz say if he could see you now, Wraith?"_

He wouldn't say anything at all, because that's what they did. They came for each other. And nothing -not Van Eck, not the Mind-Breaker, not the ghost of Jordie that kept them apart for so long, nor the memories of the Menagerie and men's hands all over her too young body- nothing would separate this bond between them. This promise.

_I would come for you. I will always come for you._

Because that's just what they did. What they would do. Forever.

The Wraith peeled her shoes off and gingerly curled up next to him. As the sun rose, her breathing evened, and she drifted off into the first dreamless sleep she'd had in weeks.

She did not have all the answers to her questions. She did not know if Kaz would ever be the same. She did not know if she would ever be the same. But the promise that tethered their souls together -these five years of painful vulnerability and fierce love and hope of forever- was too strong to be broken even if they were broken themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! This is a short story for me, but I feel like I said what needed to be said. They are going to make it, you know? These two characters have been broken before and they found their way. They can do it again.
> 
> I appreciate all comments! I love hearing how my writing impacts readers (praise, criticism, encouragement or musings).
> 
> -D.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a complete work! I will be posting at least 1 chapter a day until it is all out there. 
> 
> For updates or insight to my writing process follow me on Instagram @d_reagan_fly.


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